Issa: A Republican Watchdog, Unleashed

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Issa: A Republican Watchdog, Unleashed
By Bennett Roth, CQ Staff


It’s become a weekly tradition on Capitol Hill — the Darrell Issa memo on a White House outrage.

Last week, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent out a mass e-mail warning that the White House might try to sidestep contentious hearings for Kenneth Prewitt — its initial pick to head the Census Bureau — by appointing him instead to a senior Commerce Department post that doesn’t require confirmation but where he would potentially oversee census operations. The memo decried Prewitt’s support for using statistical sampling to compensate for missed minority populations when he was Bill Clinton’s Census director. And it quoted a letter that Issa helped draft to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke asserting that appointing Prewitt to a job with census jurisdiction “would be a blatant disregard of the entire Senate confirmation process and an affront to the Senate’s constitutional advice and consent prerogative.”

Such harsh words are the traditional stock in trade of the minority party’s senior member of House Oversight — especially when the other party controls the White House. Since the committee is explicitly charged with watchdogging the operations of the executive branch — and has full subpoena power to do so — the post, which California’s Issa has had since January, is one of the only perches outside the House leadership that permits Republicans to take direct, institutionally supported aim at the Obama administration.

And House GOP leaders are already signaling that they expect Issa to stake out high-profile points of conflict with the White House. “He’s the kind of guy who will charge forward and get to where it leads him,” a figure who will “push the envelope,” said Kevin McCarthy of California, the chief deputy minority whip.

Outside analysts underline the same point: At a time when House leaders such as Minority Whip Eric Cantor are looking inward and assessing longer-term electoral vulnerabilities, more autonomous figures like Issa can be full-time partisans. “You wouldn’t put someone in there if all they wanted to do is talk consensus,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. Tapping Issa for the oversight job “does say something about his party’s faith in his ability to throw a few hand grenades,” he added.

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